1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to distributed printing in which a single print job is divided into a plurality of print jobs, which are output on a plurality of output devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus capable of controlling deletion of a distributed print job, a distributed printing controlling method, a program for causing the information processing apparatus to execute the distributed printing controlling method, and a computer-readable recording medium storing the program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In one distributed printing technology of the related art, a printing system comprised of information processing apparatuses and a plurality of output devices connected with each other via a network, such as printers and multi-function machines, for example, outputs data created by an information processing apparatus that is divided and distributed to a plurality of output devices to output the distributed data.
A basic example of such a distributed printing system will be described with reference to FIG. 12. FIG. 12 is a schematic diagram for showing that output data having a total of 300 pages of document data is distributed to printing devices 1201, 1202, and 1203 for distributed printing. In the example shown in FIG. 12, the output data is distributed evenly to the three printing devices so that each printing device prints 100 pages: the printing device 1202 prints pages 1 to 100; the printing device 1203 prints pages 101 to 200; and the printing device 1204 prints pages 201 to 300.
Such distributed printing allows output data having a large volume or output data including a mixture of monochrome and color pages to be distributed to optimal image processing apparatuses, thus improving the operating efficiency in light-printing applications or the like.
One distributed printing system that provides high user operability for distributed printing and facilitates printout management is shown in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-163086 (US-AA-20020030851). In the technique disclosed in this publication, original print data is distributed to generate a plurality of child print jobs for a plurality of printing devices based on a distributed print instruction from the user. The plurality of child print jobs corresponding to the parent print job (i.e., the original print data) are processed concurrently. Therefore, user-friendly distributed printing is achieved.
In the technique disclosed in the above-described publication, a print request is made to the plurality of printer drivers. Therefore, a plurality of print jobs (i.e., child print jobs) are issued to and printed on a plurality of printing devices.
In non-distributed printing, the print job is deleted when a number of pages up to a required page have been printed. On the other hand, in distributed printing, for example, when a user mistakenly performs an operation to print all pages although the user wishes to merely print up to a certain page of document data, the following problems occur.
[First Problem]
In the technique disclosed in the publication described above in which control is effected so that a user considers a plurality of distributed print jobs as a single job, if the corresponding print job is deleted when the last page of the desired pages has been printed, other child print jobs that do not include the last page can also be deleted at the same time.
This problem will be specifically described with reference to FIG. 13. In the example shown in FIG. 13, it is presumed that the user has mistakenly performed an operation to print all 300 pages of print data, where the print data is distributed evenly so that a printing device 1301 prints pages 1 to 100, a printing device 1302 prints pages 101 to 200, and a printing device 1303 prints pages 201 to 300. In a case where the user actually only wishes to print up to page 125, if the parent print job managed by a distributed print control application as described in the above referenced publication is deleted after printing page 125 on the printing device 1302 is confirmed, all child print jobs being processed by the printing devices 1301, 1302, and 1303 are deleted. As a result, the printing device 1301 only prints pages 1 to 25, the printing device 1302 only prints pages 101 to 125, and the printing device 1303 only prints pages 201 to 225. Thus, pages 26 to 100 are not printed.
Since the user wishes to print pages 1 to 125, another request to print pages 26 to 100 is required.
[Second Problem]
In order to independently process child print jobs on a plurality of printing devices, when a printing device has printed the last page of the required pages, the child print job processed on this printing device must be deleted. In this case, the user must know prior to printing which of the plurality of printing devices will handle a particular child print job and which child print job on which printing device is to be deleted. The necessity to know this information is an inconvenience to the user.